001all right it's 6 30 and i called this meeting of the september the 10th meeting of the albemarle county school board to order um mrs carlson do you have a motion have to be myself i do have a motion i move that the board certified by recorded vote that to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the virginia freedom of information act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered in the closed meeting all right it's been moved by mrs carlson second by mr oberg um we've heard the motion mrs johnson could you give us um the roll call vote please mr oberg yes mr alcaro yes miss carlson yes dr acuff yes miss lee yes ms
002osborne yes mr page yes all right we will now have a moment of silence okay thank you and since this meeting is virtual we have to read this into our minutes for each night minutes of this meeting should reflect that number one this meeting is being held electronically percy at the virginia state law and admiral county ordinance because the covet 19 pandemic makes it impracticable and unsafe to assemble a quorum physically in a single location meeting is being communicated to the public electronically through zoom and streams live on the alma county public schools website and public comment may be offered through the zoom waiting room feature in accordance with the school board's protocol or by written submission uh could i have a motion to approve our agenda for tonight i move that we approve the
003agenda okay moved by mr alcaro seconded by dr akoff that we approved the agenda ms johnstone roll call vote please mr el carro yes miss carlson yes dr a cuff leslie miss lee yes is osborne yes mr oberg yes mr page yes all right uh we now need a motion to the for the approval of the consent agenda i move that we approve the consent agenda second okay was that mrs moore osborne yes i mean starbucks osborne all right move by mr alcaro second by ms osborne that we approve the consent agenda a discussion i i did want to just bring up that i really appreciate that um the policies are now uh we're now seeing the equity checklist on each policy and i i know that we had initially asked for um just a
004check but i really appreciate the added information that we've been getting on those because it definitely helps me know um how we're processing those kinds of things so i appreciate it okay thank you all right miss johnson could you give us the roll call vote on this miss carlson yes dr acuff yes miss lee yes ms osborne yes mr uber yes mr alcaro yes mr page yes and even though we have taken roll call votes i guess for a formal introduction each of our school board members please give your uh district dr kate akov katie aycock jack jewett district general karen giano alcaro at large okay mrs melanie burkhardt she doesn't appear to be on yet okay all right miss katrina carlson katrina claus in riot district ms judy lee judy lee rivanna district dave
005oberg dave oberg whitehall ellen osborne ellen osborne scottsville district okay graham page samuel miller district and we are down to public comment so mrs carlson i'm going to read the public comment guidelines before we start the school board invites and actively seeks the public's input in the matters relevant to school board governance and provides for time during its business meetings to hear from albemarle county residents and community members as authorized by ordinance of the county of alamo the school board will hold its meetings electronically during the covet 19 pandemic the school board is nevertheless committed to encouraging public comment and for this reason there will be two ways for the public to provide comment first as always written comments may be submitted to the school board clerk prior to the start of the meeting and
006will be given to all the school board members for review second members of the public wishing to provide public comment during the school board meeting may sign up online by 4 pm excuse me i think that's different now by 2 p.m the day of the meeting um the clerk is going to email zoom links to the speakers on the day of the meeting so that they can log in provide common before electronic public comment commences the vice i'm going to announce the order there's actually i think only three so i'll announce all three so that you know where you are speakers during the meeting are those submitting written comments should state their name in their address or magisterial district speakers should limit comments to those matters that are relevant to school board governance are the
007operations of the school divisions uh speakers will have three minutes to talk they'll be notified when they reach a minute mark and at the three minute mark i will have to cut you off uh although the school board will not respond to comments during the public comment period school board members may address comments at the end of the meeting agenda of under other business um i would like to add on here briefly that i know we had difficulty signing up for public comment this week so i i believe you can also email to sign up if you can't access the online sign up chart in the future with that being said we have first up amy gertner next will be patricia mcdonald and third will be christine uh conan and fourth there's one fourth one
008will be cheryl knight so amy we're ready when you are miss gertner thank you good evening school board members and dr haas my name is amy gartner and i'm a resident of the white hall district this is my 28th year teaching and all of those years have been in either second or third grade at broadest wood elementary this year i have 26 students in my class i was able to connect with 25 families through the e through email before school started i also spoke to 24 families on the phone or in a zoo meeting i will go back to the two families i did not get to speak to in a moment we do not get a second chance to make a good first impression most of our families are eager to talk to us
009they're ready to get the school year started they've been extremely patient and supportive as we go on this new adventure synchronous online learning together this week has felt like i'm hosting and producing a live daily telephone i'm up in the morning finalizing seesaw slides and i'm emailing parents to address their questions and concerns i know many educators are not sleeping well my fitbit says i'm averaging 4 hours and 55 minutes this week i'm keeping a running list of my questions and concerns about using csun zoom seesaw training was the acps summer pd for elementary teachers we use this platform for communicating with our families and posting activities for our students to use during their asynchronous learning times i do not feel prepared to effectively teach in the virtual setting i am troubleshooting and responding in
010real time for a majority of the school day the school board and dr haas has already heard from our about our concerns for the elementary schedule i'm very concerned about the feasibility of keeping up this pace i do not have young children at home i'm naturally caffeinated i do not drink coffee or sodas i believe i'm organized and work efficiently but i am told there is more planning time in this schedule but friday is not here yet we are having to create find link upload and learn all at the same time i have not started planning for what i will be teaching next week i would like to go back now to those two families that i did not speak to before the school year started one family did not respond to my email or
011call me back when i left them my home telephone number the guidance counselor was able to get mom's cell phone number when they picked up school supplies i sent a text message to mom on thursday from my cell phone i heard back from mom at 1 11 am tuesday morning saying they could not find their login information for their computer i responded back at 3 11 am when i woke up mom and i texted throughout the day and at 1 20 her child joined our class my new student stayed on zoom for another 20 minutes talking with me the other new student was having difficulty logging into we were emailing on tuesday and wednesday and at 1 15 on wednesday she was finally able to join the zoo meeting outside of bratislood the child knows
012no one on the screen but is beaming at everyone she sits outside of our school for 20 months of class i let her know i'm in the building and i can come out and say hello after class she puts her sweet face up to the camera and says i would love that our students want to see and talk to us please listen to teachers and give us the time we need to build relationships with our students and families in the elementary schedule thank you ms gartner that was almost exactly three minutes next up we will have uh patricia mcdonald mcdonald hi my name is patricia mcdonald i live in the urbana district i'd like to discuss the path forward returning to in person learning stage five it recently came to my attention that the albemarle
013county school board has not stated the specific health requirements to reach each of the five stages for return to school each albemarle county school board meeting includes a discussion of the various health metrics and statistics in our district numbers are meaningless without context the context required is specific health standards assigned to each stage for return to school so we all know we're at stage two which is all virtual learning and our goal is stage five in person learning but the community doesn't know how or when we can get there because they there have been no health criteria or standards set for each stage the community has no idea how close or far we are from stage five the lack of clear published health criteria for each stage increases uncertainty in the community and can give
014the appearance that the school board is acting arbitrarily by publishing the five stages for return to school with the accompanying health metrics the school board will increase transparency and promote understanding please adopt and publish the health benchmarks required to move through the five stages of return to school thank you thank you miss mc donald i'm sorry i keep pausing on your name i'm sorry um thank you very much the next speaker will be christine conning hi thank you chris i'm christine koenig i'm a resident of whitehall um tonight i want to talk about my four-year-old and our experience trying to get him special education services this summer my son has speech problems and is difficult to understand this past winter he also began to stutter it has affected him socially emotionally and psychologically we were
015referred for a speech evaluation to the county schools back in spring unfortunately this was just as everything was shutting down due to kova 19. it was frustrating but understandable at that time we were told that obviously they could not do it in person but because my son is four it wasn't age appropriate to complete a virtual evaluation and that it wasn't allowed as a parent this was hard to accept but we did the best we could these past several months we ordered books watched youtube videos and we were also able to get my son's hearing tested unfortunately youtube is no substitute for professional speech therapy i contacted the special education department at least four times this summer each time i was told the same thing virtual was not allowed it was inappropriate and they wouldn't
016be able to get the necessary information for the evaluation i was also told that in person could not yet happen because they were trying to secure the space and the necessary ppe the last time they told me they needed to find space and ppe was mid-august when school buildings were empty and would be empty for months and ppe shortages had substantial time to be addressed the last message i left for the department i begged them to consider using face shields or outdoor assessments or anything creative in response i was sent an email saying i can agree to an extension or move forward with our eligibility meeting and likely be denied services due to the lack of an evaluation after a few email exchanges i was offered a zoom call this week to better understand where
017options were for my son during this meeting i was told that they are resuming in-person services now but also that if i didn't feel safe within person that they could complete the evaluation virtually how is it that after six months of virtual evaluations being age inappropriate and inadequate medium for doing evaluations that suddenly that is no longer true there are five weeks worth of children ahead of my son we are looking at a three-month process to get all the paperwork and necessary steps completed to enroll him so realistically with the holidays it'll be january before he gets his first therapy session the people i spoke with this week said they weren't allowed to tell me how many children were on that list after my son but since he was added about five to six months
018ago i can only imagine how many other children and families have been let down by the special education department this year as we all know there are small windows for opportunity to correct many of these issues before they cause lifelong consequences how many of those windows closed because it was decided what appears to be arbitrarily virtual evaluation wasn't acceptable for young children this summer this is reprehensible and shameful the last thing i would like to point out is that uva and private facilities were quick to transition to virtual and have actually been open for in-person sessions for children since the governor began reopening the state so let's be clear that this disproportionately affects children and families who don't have the means to pay for private care thank you miss koenig our last speaker will be
019miss cheryl knight thank you um i chose to speak this evening to say some things that are hard to hear it seems to be an understatement coven 19 has had such a deleterious impact on our schools and communities i have struggled through the first three days of live teaching on zoom and trying to figure out how to meet the needs of the students that i serve i've been overwhelmed i've spoken to many elementary teachers who are feeling discouraged and just dog tired from these first few days a teacher i spoke with today was discussing how she could not see how she could possibly sustain this type of a schedule she's coming to school at six am and is working on school stuff until nine pm and then turns around and does it again unfortunately she
020is not unique she wonders how she can provide feedback to the many asynchronous assignments and still plan for next week's instruction i realized that this is the beginning of the year and some of that is to be expected please ask for the teacher's feedback right now most of us are too tired to sign up for public comment and or put our thoughts on paper i cannot be silent about this too many people are working way too hard i fear for the health both mental and physical of our teachers as we continue down this road morale is a very tricky issue to tackle and humans by nature tend to be negative uh according to professor lori santos who teaches the science of well-being at yale and is the host of the happiness lab podcast i don't
021want to come across as just complaining this is not anyone's fault we're in a pandemic and we need to care for each other i am very thankful to the acps administration and to you the school board for the work that you have done are doing and will do in the future i would be remiss if i did not make a request i am requesting that the elementary schedule be reviewed revisited and feedback received from all stakeholders i would be open to further conversations to discuss this with any of you thank you for your service to the acps community thank you for those comments miss knight um that concludes our public comment sign up and i would turn the speaker back to you mr page okay thank you mrs carlson and thank you to all of
022our speakers will now have our spotlight on education led tonight by our student rep mrs milan miss melanie burkhardt thank you mr page as the student representative on the school board it's an honor for me to introduce this evening's recognitions because we are playing uh we are paying tribute to a program and educators that have a significant impact on students i think it's safe to say that from its inception the strategies and practices around culturally responsive teaching have changed the lives of my classmates that's safe to say because these games have been documented as part of the rigorous progress that leads to educators becoming certified and culturally responsive teaching unless an educator can prove that their teaching methods and relationships have improved student performance they do not qualify as culturally culturally responsive educators that's a
023high bar for excellence and perhaps it's why our school division is the only one in the state that asks this of this of its educators and delivers this to its students last month during our fifth equity conference 23 educators earned their certifications and 40 educators received their micro-credential in culturally responsive teaching or crt these were the highest numbers in the program today as was the size of the conference's audience there were several thought-provoking presentations and one in particular that i hope one of our guests will explain was being comfortable in the uncomfortable creating an environment of academic risk takers i think this sums up both the promise and the purpose of the program another highlight was the naming of our equity educator of the year kimberly gibson ms gibson has served the students and families
024of albemarle county for more than 30 years and i really admire research i really admire research she uses to describe why crt is so essential she talks about the leaves of a tree representing the surface culture of our students and what me and what might be most visible in the popular perception of our students 96 birth countries delving a little deeper into the habits of our characteristics that students bring with them to our schools is like the trunk of the tree giving strength to characteristics such as fairness and respect for real progress she says come from getting at the roots of the tree understanding and celebrating the beliefs ideas and values that shape and empower the diversity of student learning i know we all want to hear more about miss gibson's personal journey but first
025i'm going to ask our very first recipient of the equity educator of the year award the ilani keys to talk about some of this year's conference most important thank you so much ms burkhart good evening to everyone i'm grateful to be here with you this evening on behalf of the rest of the equity specialist team to highlight our fifth annual acps equity conference which took place last friday august 28th this year's equity conference boasted an all-time high attendance of 330 registrants including acps educators community partners teachers and administrators from school divisions across the state and local government representatives this year the equity specialist team and the crt leadership team under the direction of dr bernard harrison organized an all virtual conference with breakout sessions and 40 speakers and presenters at our noon awards ceremony 23
026new certification awardees were recognized for demonstrating their ability to narrow and close achievement gaps for historically marginalized students in this division likewise 40 newly micro credentialed educators were recognized for their ability to transfer crt professional learning into practice we are pleased to announce our school superintendent dr matt haas was amongst those who received a micro credential in crt characteristic number one cultural lenses congratulations again dr haas amongst educators honored was jane engel an eighth grade special education teacher from jewett middle school who was able to increase student achievement in her special education english course for her students at a rate that exceeded the average of all 8th grade students at jewett including students enrolled in honors english in fact jane's students had a higher percentage of mastery than the 8th grade as a whole in
027common standards based assessment she attributes the student achievement to her growth as a teacher in her application of culturally responsive teaching a heightened awareness of cultural bias an in-depth process of instructional shifts in our classroom and her strengthened academic partnerships with students and families mindset and practice shifts like jane's are a prime example of the results common to all of our crt certification awardees also amongst those educators honored were a pair from the center for learning and growth a staff led last year by crt certified veteran leader dede jones dede intentionally and artfully promoted professional learning amongst her staff to support her teacher's practice at the center as a result two of her five teachers received certification and culturally responsive teaching hasheen davis and jennifer middlesworth in his portfolio hashim chronicles the alliance he built
028with a student who felt he had been a target of racially based deficit thinking through his years in education in his crt presentation hashem writes for my student he was in constant fight or flight mode he thought of himself as stupid because he could not read well and his anxiety was impacting him i affirmed that he was a scholar in the making i encouraged him to work harder in spite of those around him he trusted and respected me on the eve of his meeting with the committee that would determine if he would go back to his base school he and i spent an hour or more talking about the power of another chance to get it right with hashim's help the student returns successfully to his base school where hashim continues to check on him
029as a perseverant culturally responsive ally in his education lastly i'd like to highlight the work of principal daryl bonham at albemarle high school principal bonham created the structures and routines to lead a whole staff all 220 crt book study at albemarle high school this past year his dedication to affirming and acknowledging students of color at his school led him to become certified during one of the most challenging school years on record for administrators one of his teachers said this about him dara steered ahs toward becoming more culturally responsive with compassion clarity and firm vision he helped us to unpack the predictive implications of data and modeled placing relationships at the forefront of our teaching he gave students opportunities to share about their experiences with racism and discrimination at the school and made prompt efforts to
030implement changes to improve their safety and learning one last highlight of the equity conference was the award of our equity and diversity educator of the year this year like ms burkhart said the award went to the beloved long time acps educator kimberly ann gibson whose work last year as a crt leadership team member and instructional coach want her this honor kim now a new lead coach in the department of instruction is known in the acps equity community as a positive spirit a challenging counselor and an out of the box thinker i'd like to introduce everyone to kimberly ann gibson leilani thank you um and i appreciate the the honor given to me to um to just join you for a few minutes and share my journey as well the recognition is humbling and overwhelming because
031i feel like i've just touched the tip of the iceberg in this work and get the honor to continue to do it as long as i can can stand and be a part of of this community but um to share with you a couple of the significant um portions of my trip um over the past 30 years i feel like crt as leilani was explaining so well with all of the examples from this year and that you if you go into the examples from preceding years and talk to culturally responsive educators both certified and not certified or credentialed what you'll find i think is that their work aligns with the mission of this county and the the rewording of relationships first then relevance and then rigor um to me that's really the backbone of this
032work and i found in my journey relationships came first and that was the the lack that i found in my in my work with my students i always craved that close relationship and knew that that i didn't know what i didn't know i didn't know how to achieve that and when i was able to connect um with first crt in the brain by zaretta hammond and eat up the science of the brain and understand how our brains function to be able to reach my students and then to delve deeply into three characteristics developing relationships then the rigor and the relevance came i was able to understand how understanding my culture which dr haas delved into in micro credentialing and characteristic number one how my culture really intersected and imp with my students culture and impacted
033my instruction and that was huge because once i understood that then i could meet them i could help bridge the gap and understand things like with my beloved students that things like i thought i was nagging them so i backed off of my my african-american male students and they challenged me they pulled me back in and they said miss gibson why are you not reminding me and and coming back in and pushing in with me and they really called me to action um so that coupled with studying the data over so many years and studying the data with faculties who were supremely skilled and intelligent and hard working and yet seeing the numbers not move i felt like i was in a groundhog day of einstein's definition of insanity we're doing the same thing over
034and over again and we're not getting results and i'm here to tell you that crt culturally responsive teaching is the results milani alluded to that in her introduction um if you were to ask me why crt what what makes the difference i would say that crt is best practices but it's more than best practices that in order for those strategies to really sink in the first thing you have to do is have those relationships which includes not just the students but their families in their communities they have to feel safe they have to get beyond that um the feeling the threat in order for the learning to truly occur and that's what's go what going through this process and and still continuing to work in it since your certification year is really the tip of
035the iceberg and you can't quit you can't go back once you know you know then you have to continue to move and you're propelled um from your heart um but the the work just must go on and um that's how that's how it happens is working through these characteristics um and really focusing on linking your strategies and your purposeful relationship building to outcomes for students hashem didn't didn't give up he spent those hours with his student um educators across our county are doing this and this is what makes the difference this is what makes me cry this is what makes me passionate and i just appreciate y'all's support of this program because it really does make a difference for our students and it makes it different for us as educators um as we're weary and
036we're tired but when we can see that when we can see things move and students believing in themselves that's what we live for so i i just really thank you for your support in this and your continued um support of the work thank you mrs keys and ms gibson uh do any of the school board members have any questions or comments related to a spotlight on education tonight i have one and miss gibson uh this is going to be obviously a different kind of journey this year uh for you know the country as a whole but up for albemarle county public schools where do you see yourself in your journey where what's your goal to get to by the end of this year in terms of your learning your achievements and the success of your
037students so that's a great question thank you mr alcaro so um in my position as lead coach my responsibilities are over the talent development program and secondary english and language arts so i really have the sweet spot for this work um our moving to our talent development model is all about equity and so um part of our program is really building in equity audits of our work and being very real about who we are serving um and really going at an assets based approach a continuing of that and really defining it and making it more visible so that's our goal there and all of our talent development resource teachers are a hundred percent on board and doing that work right now um as far as the english and language arts component just very specifically we
038are working in um really partnering with the anti-racism policy and moving that work forward looking at our our approach to literature and letting go of literary whiteness and working through that and really examining our equitable practices in that area and empowering teachers to empower students to um critically read with and through text so that they can be more empowered as citizens and um as individuals so that's that's the specific work in my particular world or my sphere of influence right now which is just working on the systems and empowering my teachers to work with their students towards more equitable outcomes thank you so much thank you there any other questions or comments um related to spotlight on education or directed to mrs keyes or mrs gibson i guess i have one for mrs keys um
039what do you think the impact of being virtual will have on recruitment for the crt program you're muted thank you for that question the seikov we actually just had two information sessions these last couple of weeks on september 2nd and september and our information sessions are a time for us to galvanize collective efficacy around crt work in our division and we had a hundred total educators attend the information sessions um in our cohorts currently we have 200 people signed up for our cohorts so virtual the virtual environment although educators are nervous and anxious what it will be to be a culturally responsive teacher in a virtual environment we have assured them that it is the collective efficacy and our collective action that will see us through it is our our work with each other our
040encouragement of each other um our building our own virtual reality here and what it means to be a culture responsive educator that's what will get us all through and so we're we're excited about this movement that we have that's continuing to gain momentum this year thank you any other comments or questions well thank you mrs key and mrs gibson for that wonderful presentation and we really appreciate all of the work that you are doing to promote crt in the county schools so thank you so very very much for the presentation tonight thank you we are now ready for announcements uh thank you mr page i appreciate uh and if the board if it pleases the board i'd we just have one i'm just gonna talk a little bit about the first day but before that
041i really just want to thank uh leilani or miss keys and ms gibson for coming tonight i mean i just listening to you talk ms gibson and describing your journey this this career that you've had it really inspired me all over again just listening you taught both of my children at jack jewett middle school and you are true you are as true as can be they were both inspired by you as a teacher and uh we never had to ever ask them about whether they were keeping up in your class and they they were really engaged and motivated uh with the learning activities you provided so thank you for that and thank you for your leadership role in in the school system um i think that uh ms gibson hit the nail on the head
042um we are here to create a community of learners and learning one student at a time and it was uh steve kolazar former board member who insisted that we switch the the three attributes of the learning community to this order relationships relevance and rigor one student at a time and one of the things he used to say was that if you start with with relationships and then you add relevance then you have rigor because rigor is is really learning through mistakes being supported in relationships so that you care enough to come back and and and improve your work and learning and i would add another r to that based on what ms gibson talked about tonight and that's results that that is the one student at a time it it is a result one student
043at a time through those three other attributes and with regard to all of our employees i want to say that while um this certainly wasn't the way that any of us would want to open a school year you all have done an outstanding job of standing up a virtual school for the second time in five to six months with a lot of lessons learned and i'm really proud of you for that we kept saying to the educators you've got this and they got it they opened a mostly virtual school for over 13 000 students and your learning curve whether you were teaching virtually and which that is about 97 of our students are in a virtual lowering environment right now or if you're in person or if you're manning child care for out mall employees
044or preparing or delivering meals along bus routes or keeping our buildings and air clean and up and running or and this is a big ore handling the hundreds of phone calls and emails coming into our technology service desks and schools they did it and now that we're up and running we will keep getting better while not everyone is satisfied i've heard super positive feedback from students families and staff like i said we can always improve but it was a great start and on behalf of my staff at the central level i just want to thank everyone for that teddy roosevelt is quoted as having said do what you can with what you have where you are what you have and where you are are both so often out of our control however what you can
045is so often up to us thank you for demonstrating your resilience and passion for your work once again for the start of twenty twenty as the board knows and and i guess most people know all the members of the cabinet go out and visit schools uh over the first three days of school so they're all out and about visiting checking in with principals meeting up with staff often they're providing one-on-one support i know that on the very first day of school dr claire kaiser spent the whole morning at scottsdale working with an individual student who needed assistance with the technology and really i was very proud to hear that kind of hands-on service from our central office staff i i continue to visit one school each week in fact jono is going to come with
046me next monday to visit henley middle school for a half an hour just to walk the building and talk with the principal and see how things are going and i i want to say that i did have a wonderful visit at monticello high school this past tuesday our principals really are top notch i really believe that it amazes me when i walk about with rick for hovak and he addresses every single person even when they're wearing masks when we come across them by name when i complimented rick on this trait he said it comes with decades of coaching athletes if you want to get a person's attention and let that person know you care you have to address him or her by name it makes all the difference in the world to me when i
047hear a principal say this someone charged with the responsibility for thousands of our students and hundreds of employees i know that he embodies the mission one student at a time through relationships on our walk we partnered up with several staff i was so happy to see assistant principal tim driver i'm proud to say that i hired him away from nelson county back in 2005 so we could work together at alamo high school tim transferred to monticello high school this summer and he was already sporting his monticello high school apparel black and gold after more than a decade as a warrior he still has cerulean blue sneakers though and he told me he's working on getting either black or gold or both to complete his attire as a mustang i did see chief of strategic planning
048pat mclaughlin visiting the school as well plus we ran into assistant principal hank adkins in the main office i want to give a shout out to some super support staff amy gunderson and jan coyner and sam wright rick took the initiative to assign sam who's one of their office assistants who's really great with technology he assigned him to supporting monticello high school students staff and families on the phone and email non-stop this summer he's just when we were there that day he went through three phone calls while rick and i were just trying to talk to him for a couple minutes he's amazing monticello is hosting in the neighborhood of 30 students on tuesday esau teacher jennifer timms was working with english language learners as they accessed their coursework and classwork with the assistance of
049pam coleman i think i counted 12 of our employees children that that's our children and local governments children at melanie gard's child care center down on the athletic wing melanie told me that for playtime that morning she played music on the gym speaker system and the children just enjoyed running about the gym until they were exhausted several of the children told her in their own words that they felt free in the air-conditioned space and can run until they needed to stop and take a breath i have to say that i was moved to hear that along with melanie's obvious empathy empathy for the children and our thoughts about how they've been largely cooped up for months gave me paulus on a more positive note i had the wonderful opportunity to meet alcohol county public schools
050brand new jrotc teacher lieutenant colonel christopher wingate and he's not monticello high school's jrotc teacher he's working with students across the county colonel wingate was actually a classmate of pat mclaughlin's i don't know if you all knew that so he's an albemarle uh he has our model roots on my way to monticello out and on my way into monticello high school i went through a very well organized self-guided screening process on my way out i met up with one of our super human school nurses who set it up and keeps us all healthy thank you very much terry tomlin and all of our school nurses for the amazing work that you're doing so just to sum it up that's just one snapshot of students and staff in the schools and the real resilience that they're
051showing as well as all of our educators across the county who as amy pointed out and cheryl knight pointed out are really working in many ways harder than than teachers have have worked and i thank them for that and that's all i have mr page thank you very much dr haas and also thank you for giving us um the insight about your visits to all of those schools and even though i haven't said it up to this point in the meeting we do thank all of our staff in the whole county for opening under these very very difficult situations virtually we recognize that you have a really tough task facing you right now and we really appreciate everything that you're doing so thanks so very very much moving now to our school division business uh
052first item um dr mclaughlin and mrs gomez the covet 19 status update hi good evening board members i'm pat mclaughlin chief of strategic planning and i'm here tonight with eileen gomez to provide you an update on our local covid statistics as you recall our return to school plan outlined multiple factors that we will use to determine when we'll move from one stage to another as we weather the coveted crisis per your request at each board meeting will provide updates in regard to one of the factors the current covet 19 conditions in the region and in particular our community transmission and testing positivity rates all data that you see tonight has been provided by the virginia department of health and it's important to note that these statistics and trend data are one factor in determining whether
053to move forward or back in our return to school stages it's recommended that the board continue to look at all factors collectively as these decisions are made and at this time i'll turn things over to eileen to take you through our latest statistics good evening everybody thank you dr mclaughlin i'm going to show you first the case incident rate or the burden for albemarle county they provide us these updates every week and we're providing them to you every two weeks and you can see these numbers here this is cases per 100 000 in admiral county uh we started in the middle of august a little higher than we are right now but you can see it's been it's a little up and down this is considered a fluctuating trend but the numbers right now as
054of september 7th 7.8 that that looks good compared to two weeks ago especially can we go to the next one here we are the percent positivity this you'll recall is the percent of people who take the coba test to test positive uh if the trend is fluctuating but it's um it's it's pretty close tight fluctuation and this is considered kind of a low moderate rate of percent positivity and we moved to charlottesville you can see that their situation is a little different they have actually seen a pretty consistent increase in the number of cases per 100 and this they've seen this for 19 days in a row so that is definitely considered an increasing trend you can see this most recent data was 32.1 per 100 000. but their testing positivity rates actually um are
055roughly the same as albemarle counties with 6.4 considered you know moderate um and the trend has been fluctuating over the last month or so and i guess that's it on those two um mystery measures that we've been following any questions on that did the charlottesville numbers include the uva numbers yes they did [Music] has there been any additional guidance on what missed uh dr acuff brought up last time about how the testing positivity rate might not be the best indicator or the amount of positive say it for did i say right first time um how might not be a good indicator given that they're suggesting that you only test people who have symptoms well i think that locally they still think that's a good indicator because i think locally they are testing people who both
056have symptoms and who don't have symptoms and they were very happy to report that it seems anecdotally anyway from the healthcare providers that the testing turnaround time has been what we've wanted to be it's been 24 to 72 hours at most of the testing sites so that's that's been good um but i i think that the percent positivity is still considered by the health authority something that you should monitor to monitor the uh the trends thank you [Music] are there any other questions for dr mclaughlin or mrs gomez i guess eileen a question the really high in positivity rate in in charlottesville you say that that includes both uva's population as well as the community yes i guess i'm concerned when i look at the dashboards not our dashboard like the the thomas jefferson health
057district dashboard and the university dashboard they're not consolidated i mean and so you have to sort of do the math um is that number you gave us like the 32 percent um you've done the math you've consolidated the two well it wasn't 32 right it's 32 cases per 152 right right that wasn't the testing positivity that was the number of cases for a hundred thousand correct but that is our dashboard looks at both tj district and the uva numbers yes except for for this particular charlottesville it's not uh the whole thomas jefferson health district it's just for people whose address is in charlottesville okay including the uva students whose addresses are in charlotte's film i don't know if anybody had a chance to look at this but harrisonburg on the other hand their case burden
058is 118 and their percent positivity is 31 so they're they are very seeing a very high level of transmission much higher than we are but jmu started before uva did right i mean you just sent their their kids home because of the positive rate i can't imagine that the jmu students are more reckless or more likely to be infected any more than any other school so don't don't we have to expect that uva is going to have the same problem dave i would disagree just because i've i've read granted i'm not an expert on it that jmu did not have very good policies like they didn't require any testing of students before they came back to campus whereas uva is so i'm not saying i can't anticipate but you can think that there might be
059a difference between um charlottesville and harrisonburg and harrisonburg i think they had a higher rate even before the students came back because a lot of their outbreaks were attributed to the poultry processing plants so i think they the community at a higher rate than we have here in our community ms gomez am i wrong in in remembering something i heard that in addition to some uva data going into the charlottesville uh data bank that some of that will come into ours as well yes yes yes that's true it's where the the addresses are and so some of the uva students do live in el mall county and some live in the city of charlotte so i think more are in the city of charlottesville than albemarle county yes thank you [Music] okay are there any
060other questions for dr dr mclaughlin mrs gomez okay if not thank you both for being an update and we'll be you in two weeks i had a quick question really minor but and perhaps you've already answered it uh pat but uh what pat what is are we getting any feedback from the schools that have been open the private schools and are like louisa county i've seen some things in the paper about how many positive cases they have are we starting to incorporate that into our dashboard we are you know we have a weekly meeting with the um thomas jefferson health department and uh that includes both private schools and public schools who are there and for the most part eileen correct me if i'm if i'm wrong but for the most part themes things seem
061to be going pretty well uh louisa county is one of the schools that they're using as a model uh louisa currently has about one-third of their students who chose to stay home and stay virtual and the other two-thirds are split into an a-b schedule and the health department folks have been out there and seen their protocols and have really had some positive things to say about that so we haven't heard any um any real negatives from any of the schools that have been open eileen would you agree with that i would agree with that we haven't heard of any outbreaks in the schools i think one of one of those schools maybe saw a case or two but beyond that they really haven't seen an outbreak among students one thing that we are working on
062uh miss carlson and the board is that uh one piece we're working on putting together for october is a survey of the school divisions in our region and the opening plans that they had and the numbers of students coming in and other considerations so that we can just add that as another piece of information moving forward with the recommendation for the second nine weeks just to understand the lay of the land thank you dr haas thank you okay thank you so much very much we are now ready for our building services summer update by mr joe letteri mr letteri hello i'm joe latieri director of building services for albemarle county schools i'm here tonight to present to you the accomplishments of the building services team over the past few months before i speak about specific
063events i'd like to provide an overview of the building services department the department is responsible for maintaining the division's 26 schools and two service facilities we support over 2.3 million square feet of building space and maintain over 631 acres the department has four divisions that is maintenance custodial capital projects and environmental management the maintenance or buildings and grounds division employs 40 employees and has been extremely busy mowing grass moving furniture assisting contractors performing carpentry electrical mechanical and plumbing work orders hey joe who's the guy with the legs i had to get that in my legs got sunburned that day that was a great help next slide okay the custodial division employs 140 staff and is responsible for cleaning the schools over the summer months they perform deep cleaning activities which include floor refinishing and cleaning
064all spaces from top to bottom the summer cleaning checklist is simply one tool the custodians use to ensure the buildings are ready once the students and teachers arrive again all spaces are clean from top to bottom the custodians do incredible work the environmental division has been very busy with the covid pandemic response in preparation they have created plans for physically distancing procured and distributed distributed coven 19 supplies to all schools and have installed cobia 19 related signage in all buildings in addition to covid covid19 works the environmental group was successful in bidding and securing a contractor to make improvements to the stony point well system and work with the ravana solid waste authority to infill the basin near the transportation department before and after shots here okay now on to capital improvements i want to
065begin by reminding you that the capital improvement maintenance program was not as robust this year budget cuts about one-third the program had significant impacts on what we were able to accomplish reductions to the maintenance program were a result of the concerns related to cobit 19. some of the cuts included casework replacement locker removal window and door upgrades restroom upgrades painting and flooring improvements however despite the cuts we were able to make significant repairs to our facilities this year at mar high school we were able to perform upgrades to the mechanical systems we were able to replace two boilers a chiller the electrical switch gear and two sewer pumps all of these systems were 30 years old the vehicle maintenance facility had its hvac system replaced this system was also 30 years old and the new
066system will improve efficiency and improve the air quality at henley middle school we installed a new emergency generator the generator not only improved the backup power for life safety systems but also allow the phones and various kitchen equipment to remain operable in the time of a power outage at walton we replace the front office hvac system with a high efficiency vrf system as well as replace the chiller that serves the entire building these changes will make the spaces more comfortable more reliable and more energy efficient jewett and henley each received a new walk-in cooler and walk-in freezer to replace the aging obsolete equipment brownsville received a new kitchen exhaust hood and dishwasher room upgrades in addition to the new dishwasher the dish room received a large pass-through window from the cafeteria to allow a more
067efficient collection of trays we were able to renovate the kitchen serving area at jewett which included serving line improvements and a new security gate the main objective here was to increase the efficiency of serving foods to the students walton woodbrook and albemarle high school received new roofs on a significant portion of each building over a hundred twenty four thousand square feet of roof was replaced for approximately three acres we modernized classroom spaces at both walton and jewett middle schools at jewett we upgraded the cte space and at walton we updated six classrooms including soundproofing between classrooms and providing natural light by installing skylights renovations to western albemarle high school shop were also completed this summer improvements included a new hot work area for forging and welding and renovations to the woodworking area that included a
068new dust collection system new bay doors new shop equipment and electrical upgrades a six classroom trailer was installed at baker butler which included bathrooms technology security locks and furniture mountain view received new signage on the building at the road and within the building the scottsville addition and renovation project is progressing well this summer we completed renovations to 12 classrooms four bathrooms and provided new furniture the addition which includes five classrooms and a gymnasium is well underway the rough site grading is complete the building footers have been installed and this structural steel is arriving next week the red hill classroom edition has started this project includes a new six thousand three hundred square foot gymnasium edition as well as renovating the existing gym into classroom space before i conclude i'd like to acknowledge and thank not
069only the building services staff but also the staff from the department of facilities development for their help in the execution of these capital projects we have a great partnership with them and with that i would just like to end with a big thank you for your support and i'd be happy to answer any questions thank you very much mr are there any um questions from board members for our little material and uh building services joe i just want to say that i really appreciate everything you've done thank you david joe your your whole team is terrific and um you know i've really missed being in the schools this summer because one of the fun parts was to walk around and see all of the projects that your folks were working on and so i i
070look forward to getting back in there and seeing what the changes are thank you so much to you and your entire team thank you yeah it really looks like you were very very busy you and the whole team uh this summer so thanks so very very much for everything that you do very good except for the guy in that mower [Laughter] that's true i did other things besides the mower didn't i joe you did matt matt was with the custodial crew as well and did it fine he was taking the gum off the carpets i'm sure no i was using a square cat to strip wax i learned how to do that and learn how to use a grease gun wow i have to admit matt put in a full day joe i do have
071oh are you gone i do have one question um yeah whether any of your staff have not wanted to be in the buildings when students are in and you've had to sort of reallocate them am i on i'm sorry what was your question i missed it was whether any of the building services staff have expressed a reluctance to be back in the buildings when with students and whether you've had to move them around a bit um no not really i mean we've have a pretty strict protocol with our staff and that is you know make sure they social distance make sure they wear their face mask and wash their hands religiously we preach that not only do they have to anticipate that those around them have coveted but that they may have coveted so um
072we've been uh my staff has accepted it pretty well and um don't have any problems at this time or complaints thank you okay thank you very much mr letteri there being no further questions we'll move to um a presentation of the new grading policy led by jay thomas mr thomas yeah good good evening everybody uh my name is jay thomas i'm the director of secondary education i'll be presenting this evening with jen sublet who's our director of professional learning and natalie farrell uh the lead coach for mathematics lead coaching and overseas mathematics they've been a part of this since the beginning our other committee members include katrina sims megan maynard jamie gelner and leilani keyes student feedback is a large component of learning and as part of our continued high school redesign albemarle county public
073schools has been looking at key structures that support student learning as a continuous process for student achievement we are presenting tonight a key component of student feedback grading to date we have not had a grading policy but rather a group of key procedures and structures across our secondary schools these structures were held together by school building administrators and individual professional learning communities in an effort to support teachers with their grading practices we have determined that an underlying foundational document is both important and necessary so tonight we will review essential elements of the new proposed policy that you have provide context and background that informed policy creation outline next steps for policy implementation and answer any questions that you may have the policy goal is to implement grading practices to support our mission and vision as
074a school system as you can see below and with the anti-racism statement where it fits in is us trying to end the predictive value of grades the grades play of on in race and ensure each individual student and staff success in implementing the new policy this quote from feldman um i think really sums up some of the stuff that we're working on it says no classroom can truly be equitable until we address this inequitable foundation in our schools which is grading so we've developed three pillars that you'll see in the policy that we're proposing that there's it's supportive of student learning that it's accurate and that it's consistent as you read through the grading policy one of the excerpts that we wanted to share that really jumps out is the grades or grading are the
075representation of student achievement either a letter or a number score and should accurately represent a student's mastery of course standards the purpose of a grade is to communicate student achievements at a point in time grades will be accurate supportive of student learning and consistent so now i'd like to turn it over to jen sublet to talk to us about how we got to this point thank you very much jen sublet director of professional learning and we wanted to give a little context for the work that we've done before developing this policy to really highlight some of the ways in which we've worked with teachers and created shared buy-in for the work that we're doing now in 2018 we gave a survey to all of our secondary classroom teachers i mean we really pushed to make
076sure that survey actually was completed by every single one of them we brought the teachers together then middle school teachers and high school teachers to pro to do a protocol of reflection through the feedback that we got what we found was that there was a lot of variance in classroom policies and practices across our schools and as we looked at the survey results we also realized that teachers wanted to have a really clear sense of our philosophical why behind our grading practices and then guidelines about what grading practices would be best for communicating achievement to our students and to our families this gave us the foundation to launch a professional development cohort program that began in summer of 2019 and we've sustained that professional plan through the year including the summer in 2020 we've created
077cohorts of teachers from all of our secondary schools who've come together with nationally recognized experts to look at not only our current practices and to push back against them but also to look at other models and practices that might better align with our mission and vision today we have had 215 teachers join this cohort and they represent faculty members of all of our secondary schools hi everyone i'm natalie farrell one of the lead coaches and i also am the content lead for mathematics so as jen said beginning in 2018 with the survey to teachers we we designed our goals around the teacher feedback uh what we heard from teachers is that they were seeking consistency and clarity from the division about how our grades should be managed and also what our grades should mean so
078uh we started to um started a plan basically to to mitigate some of the variance we were seeing from class to class and from course to course and from school to school based on research and best practice we missed the slide j yep okay so um this is how we want to show that our policy supports the current school board priorities and also give you some examples of of how that could manifest so creating a culture of high expectations for all means that we would really like to focus on learning over compliant behaviors how do we get kids to do the real work that shows us that they're learning what we've intended to teach that also means letting not letting kids opt out of the work how do we maintain the high expectations support all
079students to meeting the goal and also um get the work we don't want any kids to opt out of the work with and just take a zero identifying and removing practices that perpetuate the achievement gap jay talked about that earlier but that's also about us separating academic achievement and work habits work habits tend to add to grade fog meaning when we include things like participation and attendance in in a grade we're not reporting out the the best indicator of student achievement maximize opportunities for students at all levels to identify and develop personal interests this is about students knowing and understanding what their grade represents and what they need to do to get better and that's really about the feedback that teachers are giving to to our students okay okay jay has a cookie finger what
080one back jay thanks okay sorry that's not it okay so there it is okay so so layering of that learning uh in the spring we started to develop our policy with with the whole team so what we wanted to do is maintain those core beliefs of our division and our division philosophy which are really outlined in those three big pillars supportive of student learning consistency and accuracy to to start to design this um policy so we started to by reviewing policies from other divisions all around virginia but also nationwide uh we worked with eab to combat compile some research around grading practices we also put this policy in front of ken o'connor and rick warmly they are well-known grading experts and consultants so we wanted to make sure what we were writing was aligned with
081the the best things we know about grading and then we also hosted some community forums with parents um and ken o'connor to to answer some questions about what what these what grades do for our kids then um we put the policy in front of all the cohort teachers uh all the administrators across the division and also the central office staff to get feedback which has actually led us to to this point so what we would like to do is um continue pushing forward with learning and growing and building up the appropriate systems and structures that would support putting this policy into practice um we're working really hard with our school-based administrators right now uh ensuring that they have everything that they need to support not only virtual learning but all learning moving forward with the
082right and and best practices for students that support teaching and learning when it comes to grades um we're working on launching a micro credential course that would onboard more teachers uh to learning about grading practices this fall and also um really the big work would be outlining the regulations that align to the policy meaning bringing teachers and students in and really talking through how this policy looks in practice and how it will align and support and um be most productive for teachers and students and also you know our the technology the grade books that we currently use so we just wanted in with one more quote before we asked some question or had you asked some questions again another feldman quote making our grading practices more accurate and fair is the most important kind of
083equity work confronting a deeply ingrained part of our education system and reforming it to transform the entire organization if we have courage commitment and love for our students we can change the very dna of our schools instead of perpetuating desperate outcomes our schools can be designed to support success for every student another opportunity we had is we were bringing in the international experts on grading a few of them ken o'connor rick wormley we had a chance to put this proposed policy in front of them to review and give us some feedback before we even brought it to you so we do thank them for that as well so with that we'll pause and see if you have any questions thank you very much jay and team school board members do we have any questions in
084regards to um our new grading policy update i guess i'm i'm wondering whether a perverse benefit of virtual teaching is that some of the fogs of teaching like behavior in the classroom or attendance since we now are saying you don't have to attend synchronous those things that have often filtered into the grading may be easier to identify i don't know that's absolutely right um it's actually allowed our teachers more flexibility um and lots of really nice conversations across the division being virtual has actually brought us a little bit closer together because we can get on zoom and we don't have to get people from western and monticello and elmer all to one place so we've had some really productive conversations around just that thing i was just gonna say i'm incredibly appreciative of this work
085if i recall correctly i think it was matt when he first joined with something that wanted her tackle and not that it means anything because it's anecdotal but i'll just say in my own schooling career i remember my childhood was fairly chaotic my mom had a lot of kids my parents didn't have a lot of money and i remember the one class i failed in high school was one that the grading was all about whether you could construct this notebook and keep it with you the whole period and have it every day with all your papers in the right order that's what the grade was based on and i couldn't and i mean it's a very real thing that affects a lot of students when your grades are not based on your your content knowledge
086necessarily but like the preparation or what you can bring in um so i'm very appreciative of the work i'm excited to see us at this level of consistency across our grades greeting thank you yes great great work so um just uh one request i have jay is uh first of all he did an outstanding job i love the way this is this is top down and bottom up that's a big deal um so but what i would ask is if jay would you go back and dig up the survey results from um this we had we did the survey i think it's been a couple years ago now hasn't it 2018 yeah yeah so for for some of the board members that were newer to the board they might appreciate uh seeing the results from
087the survey because like you were mentioning earlier how how inconsistent the grading was across schools and classrooms within schools on some pretty key areas and then we did have teachers say wow i mean we really want to be more consistent with each other and i think that was the launching pad for us to begin to to work on this so i'm also excited about the micro credential for grading it is a critical practice for teachers it's also the area of the greatest malpractice that we have in education and none of our other reforms will move forward and have the impact they can have unless we become more accurate with assessing and reporting student performance so i appreciate it but um if you could do that that would i think that would be well received by
088the board absolutely we'll get it thank you hey just one more thing i would i'm not familiar with all the experts cited in this so if you could just forward this uh slide set with the links that would be great okay all right you can see uh school board members at the bottom of this um slide uh since this is an action item the steps that probably we could or should take um in order to move this forward so um i don't think we had a whole lot of proposed changes uh with the um policy so is it back in census could we have this on the consent agenda where our next meeting for approval of the um of the policy any objections to having it on consent next it's fine with me is okay
089so there's no opposition to having it on consent agenda next time right correct okay all right so thank you so very much jay and team absolutely for your great work on this absolutely we'll make sure that gets on thank you okay all right we're now scheduled for a 10-minute break i have on my computer the time 7 53 so we are recon uh convene at 803 pm eastern daylight time right see you in 10 minutes hey graham i don't think you're muted just in case just all right thanks kate uh thanks kafina okay it is now 803 pm and we are ready to move into our next agenda item um our hiring update uh mrs lawrence jerome good evening lorna jerome director of human resources thank you for this opportunity this evening to share information
090today regarding the hiring of our licensed employees our teachers and administrators as you listen to this information you will notice that we have hired a significantly lower number of teachers than our recent trends have shown we are very cognizant of the impact that coven 19 has had on the number of vacant positions we have with a decrease in budget and staffing allocation coupled with a decrease in student enrollment all due to the pandemic we did less hiring what hasn't changed is our unwavering focus on hiring the best teachers and administrators for our students with a significant focus on the hiring of minority educators our goal continues to be to have our teacher demographic match our student demographic as we know we have a ways to go to align the student and teacher demographics in this
091100-day report dr haas shared that if we were to hire 25 minority teachers each year over the course of eight to ten years we would meet that goal we've used that number of 25 as our target you will see that we've fallen short of that this year but we continue to take deliberate action to keep our focus on this incredibly important need the hiring numbers that you see tonight only tell part of the recruitment and hiring story they don't include the number of teachers that have exited our division due to retirement or resignation nor do they include the makeup of each applicant pool or school's ability to hire for those candidates that were made offers and chose a different path we are working to develop a dashboard that will have some of this information more
092readily available in real time additionally as in the past we will share our annual report in december which provides comprehensive data on all of our employees including resignations and retirees broken down by gender and race tonight you will be hearing uh where we are today with our hiring we'll talk about our some strategic hiring practices our current state and trends and our provide a new teacher focus with that i'd like to turn it over to mr john mcquilkin to provide the board with uh some of the strategic hiring trends good evening i'm john mcquilkin and i'm the recruitment and diversity coordinator here on human resources each year we review and refine our recruiting and hiring practices as we work toward the goal of increasing the diversity of our teaching staff to that end this year
093we piloted several new strategies while continuing to build on the success of existing programs i'll begin with a few new things we did behind the scenes on the administrative side one of these was the introduction of the educator professional inventory or epi candidate assessment tool the epi is a research-based instrument developed developed by experts at harvard university and the university of chicago which allows prince which allows principals to quickly identify candidates most likely to provide the highest student gains over the course of a school year much like our screening interview process did in previous years one of the advantages the the epi offers over the traditional screening interview is that because it is a blind skill based assessment it helps to reduce bias in the hiring process by allowing principals to focus on proving predictors
094of teacher success rather than subjective measures it also provides principals with a personalized professional development pathway for their new teacher hires based on their identified strengths and opportunities for growth it's important to note that research has shown that the epi assessment does not discriminate against protected classes though novice teachers across the board do tend to slow slightly lower than experienced teachers of course all of our administrators were trained on how to interpret epi scores dr kaiser will provide some additional information about the epi tool later in our presentation to further address the issue of bias we developed new training for our administrators on mitigating the impact of bias during the interview process this training focused on increased awareness of the different types of bias that can affect decision making and using best practices for interviewing
095switching to some of the active recruiting strategies we use this year knowing that there is a great deal of competition for qualified minority teachers we continue to make a purposeful effort to build relationships with prospective teachers of color early in the hiring season through outreach via phone and email frequent follow-up conversations and early interviews we were able to offer four early contracts to minority candidates in february and multiple additional offers throughout the spring and summer as a result of these focused efforts just one quick example of how this work can pay off excuse me excuse me i reached out to a prospective teacher of color in early december it was still very early in the hiring process and i just wanted to get a sense of her interest for the coming school year she shared
096that she was moving to charlottesville in january and was looking for part-time work for the rest of the school year from our conversations i knew she had a background in avid so i connected her with one of our middle school principals who was looking for a teaching assistant for the rest of the year she interviewed was hired pretty much right on the spot and wound up being one of our very first hires this year for a teaching position this is just one example of how this kind of one-on-one outreach can be successful and there were others this year this work takes time it's one candidate at a time but it can definitely have an impact we also continued to build and strengthen relationships with hbcus we attended the hbcu career development fair in baltimore the
097american association for employment and education conference in norfolk where we met with staff from norfolk state and the teachers of color conference at vcu in richmond we also contacted the school of education career advisors at all along the east coast in january to let them know that we had begun active hiring for the 2021 school year and we invited them to send students to our job fair which i'll talk more about shortly and we were scheduled to attend three hbcu education job fairs this spring along with several others unfortunately they were all cancelled due to covid but we will continue to build on the connections we've made and work to expand them further this year this year we also continued our long-standing partnership with the african-american teaching fellows program and are pleased to say that
098we hired both of this year's aatf fellows we're really excited and proud that they're starting their careers here in almar county public schools and dr kaiser will be sharing a little more about them with you in just a few minutes some of the new initiatives started this year include the albemarle fellows program which was a partnership with the uva's curry school of education to offer students completing their education degree a year-long opportunity to work as a teaching assistant while completing their student teaching requirement this not only provided the student teacher with a comprehensive year-long internship as opposed to the typical nine-week student teacher experience but also allowed them to earn a salary during the year to help pay for their education expenses one of our most promising early contract hires this year was an avamaro
099fellow in february we held a job fair at k-tech with more than 80 job seekers in attendance we can't say for sure that this is the first job fair that we've ever hosted but it's definitely the first in many years we talked to new candidates many of the candidates that we've been talking to in prior months came by as well so it was a great way to continue to build those relationships we had administrators on site conducting screening interviews and a number of the candidates we talked to there were eventually hired over the course of the spring and summer staff from transportation department and the extended day program were also in attendance also this year we collaborated with our school principals and assistant principals to completely redesign the teacher job description to bring it more
100in line with the school division's vision mission and values and to emphasize our commitment to culturally responsive teaching this is significant because this new language appears on every teacher job vacancy that we post online something that we're excited about is that we begin filming a new recruitment video partnering with the office of strategic communication that highlights the innovative things we do in amron county schools to maximize opportunities for all students and to give prospective applicants an idea of what it's like to be a teacher here in the county filming was unfortunately interrupted when schools were closed this spring but we're working on a shorter version of the video that we can use in the meantime to broaden our outreach and we'll certainly share that with you once it's completed and finally this year a team
101of hr staff together with members of the office of community engagement began an intensive project to conduct an internal equity audit to date this work is centered on self-examination and exploration of our own cultural lenses an assessment of our organizational culture in identifying and planning for next steps all with a focus on ensuring that our organizational culture policies and practices are aligned with the values of diversity inclusion and racial equity we look forward to continuing this important work and providing the board with additional updates in the future and with that i will turn it over to dr daphne kaiser good evening chairman page and board members daphne kaiser director of educator quality i would like to bring your attention to the next slide of the new teacher hires reflecting the total number of teachers hired
102to date for the 2020-2021 academic year as well as the specific breakdown of the minority category the total number of educators hired is 124 which is about 60 fewer teachers than the previous two years taking into consideration that we have hired fewer teachers this year most of the categories are consistent with numbers from the previous two years we continue to have a highly educated cadre of instructional staff members with most having a master's degree this year we hired 89 teachers with master's degrees or 72 percent of the total number of teachers hired prospective candidates that we talk with during job fairs recruiting events and daily interactions continue to state that they are attracted to acps because of the emphasis placed on innovation project passion-based learning cutting-edge technology equity initiatives and diverse programming to support the
103whole child candidates continuously seek out opportunities with acps whether starting out as clinical interns practicum students or student teachers or even possibly stepping into a teaching assistant position to gain valuable experience in pursuit of becoming a teacher candidates are enthusiastic engaged and highly motivated about their prospects of joining the acps team our work and emphasis regarding new hires has been to increase the numbers of minority educators across all levels this year we hired a total of 20 minority teachers or 16 percent of the total number of teachers hired looking more closely at the minority breakdown we have the greatest number of hires for the black or african american and hispanic or latino categories followed by asian and two or more races at the beginning of last school year the hr team met with the administration
104of each school to discuss their student teacher demographics as well as their specific goals around minority hiring we had great conversations with administrators where all emphasize the importance of having diverse quality instructors in the classroom which is key to increasing student achievement and impacting the overall dynamics in the school they also expressed that having students exposed to more diverse teachers in our classrooms positively impacts all students although hiring was not as robust as the previous two years several schools did have an opportunity to increase the diversity of their teaching staff early spring of this year we offered four early contracts one of which declined the offer to stay close to home due to covet 19. prior to the pandemic we were on track with minority hires and by april we had already hired five minority
105teachers the next slide shows the hiring trends and focus areas although the minority category at 16 is down slightly from last year's 17 it seems to be moving consistently the first year teachers increased slightly to 32 percent and the total number of applicants increased to 1074 in comparison to previous years the overall candidate pool was 11 minority and our new hires were 16 minority which resulted in drilling down farther in this year's candidate pool we believe this is attributed to administrators emphasis on increasing diversity within the teaching ranks to better align with student demographics in addition the hr team piloted a research-based assessment tool epi or educators professional inventory this assessment tool measures strengths and key areas such as teaching skills cognitive ability attitudes factors and overall qualifications proven to most accurately predict teacher effectiveness
106the tool has allowed the human resources office to target high performing teachers to recruit establish relationships and connections with prospective candidates as well as provide an early opportunity to pull groups of potential candidates together for principal initial screenings the tool is only one component of a candidate's application however the epi score has provided administrators additional information to utilizing their total assessment of a candidate we value the importance of having high quality diverse educators in the classroom and we will continue working to address our current demographic data implementing various strategies to increase minority percentages to better align with student demographics we continuously focus our energies on increasing the numbers of applicants in job pools early childhood special education special education dual language part-time and late vacancy positions specifically working to recruit and secure quality candidates for
107heart to staff areas such as early childhood special education science special education and dual language lastly continuing efforts to cast a wider net around minority recruitment hiring and retention the next slide provides information regarding administrator promotions and transfer moves of current albemarle county staff members this year we had seven promotions and five transfers similar to the reduction in the number of new teacher hires we had fewer administrator vacancies so there were fewer opportunities for transfers and promotions all of us all the positions we hired for considered both internal and external candidates our internal candidates continue to perform at much higher levels in comparison with similar candidates from other divisions the investment in mentoring professional development and overall training by the division has provided employees opportunities to professionally learn grow and explore their own interests and
108passions resulting in their successful pursuit of career advancement the information presented this evening is preliminary and we plan to bring back to the board next month our annual plan with the final dated data for this hiring season the last slide highlights two new energetic instructors who have joined the acps family i had the opportunity and pleasure last year to sit and talk with two african-american teaching fellows hindi o'reilly and markell woodson during the beginning of the year breakfast for the aatf program both were extremely excited about the upcoming year as a fellow experienced in student teaching and pursuing a job opportunity for the upcoming school year kendia completed her student teaching at ko she's a uva graduate and she did a wonderful job in kindergarten she even served as a kindergarten teaching assistant as part
109of the albemarle fellows program several principals were in hot pursuit of her she had several offers and i remember having a conversation with her discussing fit exploring school culture and administrator support she thought deeply about the opportunities and decided to join the team at baker butler elementary what is most interesting about marquel both john and i advocated hard for markel to complete his student teaching in the county he grew up in fluvanna and has ties theirs ties there which is understandable why he would want a student teach there we even talked to his longwood professor during a diversity conference at vcu early spring for markel was already establishing connections and relationships in the county he served as an academic coach bus driver and substitute teacher he shared with me that he really really wanted to
110be a part of the acps family we are very fortunate to have both kendia and markell as part of our team i spoke with them after the first day of school and they both stated that they had a great day and they look forward to all the wonderful experiences throughout the year we have captured quotes from them that are listed on the slide regarding their first day of school two examples of exceptional students that we have hired through partnerships with the african american teaching fellows and the uva curry school of education through the albemarle fellows program at this time i will turn it over to ms lorna jerome to discuss the upcoming annual report in human resources office focus areas thank you dr kaiser again i hope that you found this snapshot of our hiring
111to date helpful as we mentioned we do come back in several months with a comprehensive annual report i think it would be helpful for us if there's additional information that we haven't provided you in the past that you let us know we do intend to do a deeper dive this year into the data through a racial and gender lens so we know that we will be providing that and we also share information on not only teachers and administrators but all of our classified employees as well at this time i would open it up and see if you all have any questions about the information we've provided this evening are there questions from the board i have one for when we have the more comprehensive picture in a couple months i'm also very interested in the
112retention rates and again through the racial lens and anti-racist lens how are we retaining our teachers of color we will certainly be happy to provide that we also share exit information with um includes reasons employees leave us great thank you i have a specific question if you go back to the slide that has the number of minority teachers that was hired that slide does the two or more races count are those double counted because i don't think the percentages are right there that's like 20 over 104 white teachers which would be i would think closer to so i'm assuming the two or more races that three is also checking boxes and black or african-american are hispanic or whatever they're mixed with you see what i'm saying john john i i think um i'll let you
113answer this one but i think we only count them one time because we don't know what the other races are that they identify with um because we just go with every what they report so we'll hold it is a distinct category it's not a combination it's a minor thing i just i mean it's been a while since i've been in math class but 20 over 104 is not 16 i don't think um it's over 100 it's over 124. that was the total thank you no no but i'm trying to compare anyway i will i will look at it but i was yes i will look at it i'm not going to speak more because i don't want to dig myself into a hole uh katrina explain math again i was doing it as a ratio
114of not not in the percentage of total i but i get now that that percent over there is i'm gonna have to think about this let me talk about my bigger point which is that i can appreciate that this is a difficult area to make progress in i was reading articles about how divisions across virginia are struggling to improve their diversity hires but i think i'd be remiss if i didn't state that i mean this is this is progress that is so slow as to be um problematic for me and three years we have we have increased our minority highers despite concentrated effort by one percent which with these numbers that's why i was trying to figure out just to make sure i mean that's like an additional teacher or two so i guess i
115want to say that and so to think how to be constructive about that what i would like to see when we come back with the more comprehensive plan is what new strategies we are going to be undertaking because the strategies we have right now i would i would say are not adequate um i don't know where we're getting these strategies from i don't know if we're using a research site to come up with things i'm not saying i have the answers i know that some places i mean like i'm just throwing things out here and i know you guys are thinking about this stuff but like are we offering bonuses for teacher referrals i've heard that's you know that's those are the kind of things and i guess i just want a presentation that is
116um you know it's interesting it's interesting the the compensation piece is a huge part of our ability to hire one of the things that we had done this year you may remember as part of the budget initiative we were looking at a a kind of an early signing bonus for new teachers it was a way for us to recruit to recruit minority teachers to the area that was something that came specifically from conversations that we had with the with the folks from norfolk state and um virginia state i think it was about one of the some of the barriers that it is for their students to come with us salaries of course is another one i know that our all of our hands are kind of tied this year with that but but those actually
117play a piece of this as well but um to your point ms carlson one of the things that we actually were talk have recently been talking about is you know trying to find places where they've they've kind of figured this out and and really see and get with them and see what is it that we you know we're using research-based strategies um and then some creative strategies as well but we definitely want to make sure that we are focused on um if somebody has figured this out and is doing better um we would love to to partner with them and learn from them and and i agree with you the the movement is um painfully slow and definitely not what we we're not going to get to our goal if we keep going at this
118rate and i guess one thing that's when i when i was reading articles around it and like i said not an expert but one of the biggest barriers that schools seem to be facing at least virginia specific what were rural districts where they don't have comparable pay but i feel like we've set our target to be i think in the top quartile so i guess i'm just i think we need to be big but it sounds like we know that so i guess what are we going to do differently with my next question um i think uh ms carlson your comment about competitive pay is just right on the money um you'll remember that uh when we had conversations last year about trying to get to a four percent pay raise for teachers um that
119was part of our strategy because you know i've i've kind of changed my mantra here over the past couple years from saying that we have a competitive market to we just have a competitor and our competitor is charlottesville and they pay teachers a higher pay rate to start and the pay stays higher all the way through and so if i'm a minority applicant or any other applicant for that matter and i'm looking to get a good start in life i'm and i don't need to change very much as far as the location that i'm heading toward i'm going to go to the district sitting right next to albemarle um if i can to start out at a higher pay rate so that was one of my biggest disappointments among dozens uh in our budget process
120last year was we didn't get i felt like knowing where the city was going last year with their pay raise that if we were gonna hit four percent we would have finally flattened out with them at the start and at least be able to attract more teachers particularly more minority teachers into our applicant pool i one of the things i appreciate about this year's hiring was even though the pull shrank for minority teachers the hiring of minority teachers went deeper into the pool they were minority applicants made up 11 of the pool they made up 16 of the hires so they dug deeper into there and what that tells me is that the principles of the schools are are beginning to realize and many of them are beginning to realize because they've experienced at least
121the beginning of or the full micro credentialing process or and or the certification process around culturally responsive teaching to understand how impactful it is for students to see themselves in their educators and they are hungry to hire minority applicants and applicants with more diverse experiences you use the word rural i often use the word rural to describe albemarle as a as a rural school system that is trying to be more metropolitan and move in the right direction but there are still some rural vestiges uh that we are continuing to fight against which include hiring people i know uh hiring people whose people i know and we are making headway with those things um but really i want to put that pay that compensation piece that you mentioned right back out in the forefront again because
122we had a couple of uh dollar sign strategies that i thought were gonna help us get ahead a little bit because we do need to make more than these just holding serve or um incremental changes if we're gonna have an impact especially um as minority teachers come and go even aatf candidates are not required or aren't expected through their mou with aa tf to stay beyond a certain tenure depending on the amount of financial assistance they receive from aatf so we gotta we have much more work to do i'm so proud of the work that's going on especially when i hear about these intense individual efforts um we just gotta get a bigger pool we have got to get a bigger pool i have a question um i think for mr mcquilkin i think you
123were talking about the hbcus in our pool and um i think there are 107 of them across the country and i just wanted to to know how big is our net getting in terms of trying to recruit from the hbcus are we just focused on the on the you know washington maryland virginia north and north carolina and i'm missing one in there uh probably uh west virginia or kentucky um but how big a net are we are we throwing out there we um we have been kind of focusing more on that mid-atlantic region that you described in years past this year we expanded it basically um to the entire east coast um from you know maine to florida and we didn't i think we we probably maybe went as far west as tennessee um this
124year in terms of in terms of outreach but that you know that's something that we can certainly broaden but that's a great start i mean if it's just a matter of getting familiar with them and continuing to to to work that market that sounds like a great market that you're you're in i'm sorry i'm sorry dr kaiser i'm gonna i was gonna say one of the things that we we've done over for a number of years now we've really paid attention to the recruitment fairs that we have gone to um uh obviously uh increasing the hpcu piece now but all of the recruitment fairs and one of the things that we're we get feedback on from candidates at those fairs is they've got to have a willingness to come here and so um you know
125we we could really focus the the the kind of more of a re on regional affairs because we know that those are the the kids that will come to us the the teachers that will come to us it's very rare that we get somebody outside of contiguous states but that's something that i think with these partnerships that we're working to develop that i'm hopefully i'm hoping that we can shift that trend there thank you mcquilkin i'm going to chime in to say i was definitely wrong so yeah no problem you've checked your math work right you know it just happened to work out that if you didn't do the total and you just put um 20 over 104 that was also 16 so it was like but no excuse i'm sorry that's all right we're
126not grading here we have a new policy mastery no no but we are teasing right okay are there other questions okay i do have two first i'd like to commend dr daphne kaiser on um being so active in getting uh mr woodson to come to us instead of going to his native fluvana so thanks so much for doing that and also um i share uh mrs carlson and dr haas's concerns and um maybe uh making sure that we do continue to focus on minority recruitment minority teaching but i also noticed maybe another thing with the uh statistics too we have a really small amount of male um teachers that's been hired so are we doing anything what 16 compared to 84 are we doing anything to sort of try to address that recruitment uh situation
127along with the minority recruitment i can jump in with that one this is the first year that we've seen a significant drop like that in recent years of the minorities it's actually not been an area that we have focused on because there really has not been a need um for a number of years we've looked at male elementary teachers as in a minority candidate category obviously not a a racial or ethnic minority um but that is something that we will now be paying closer attention to okay thanks any other questions from board members okay if not thank you mr rome and all of your thank you look forward to seeing you in a few months in that segment so see you in a few months thank you all thank you all right we will now
128have our enrollment update by mrs rosalind schmidt hi good evening rosalind schmidt chief operating officer tonight i'll print an update on our enrollment for this school year as stated in the summary of this agenda item we typically report on 10 day enrollment but obviously with the later start date this year that information is not available at this business meeting since we're only three days into the school year so i'm going to do an enrollment report on the second day of school which was yesterday i emailed that pdf last night and then i'm going to walk through it tonight and it will be attached to the agenda item so again this is data from september 9th we formally report data to the state based on september 30th and march 30th so these are considered preliminary at
129this point okay so the first i have three pages the first is just an overall summary broken down first by level elementary middle school and high schools this first column is our enrollment as of september 30th 2019 so last year we were hovering right around 14 000 students uh we um as part of our budgeting process made a projection for this school year we were projecting growth if you recall last year we experienced a pretty substantial growth and we were projecting additional students additional 200 students and then this column is where we are today um in our in the current school year as you can see it's a pretty dramatic decrease as we had previewed at the at the last meeting so when we compare our total enrollment at from last year we have 717
130less students and if we compare our enrollment to what we had projected it to be we are down 921 students again this is by level elementary middle and high school and you will see the bulk of these decreases are occurring at our elementary level so breaking that data down further we have provided that enrollment by school again we're comparing it to september 30th data from last year the projection we had made for budgeting purposes and then where we are as of the second day of school so i just want to draw your attention to a couple specific takeaways from this breakdown first off um we do have three elementary schools that are counter to that uh decreasing trend cross a scottsville and woodbrook are all either increasing or very barely missing their projections in last
131year but we do have very significant uh uh decreases at several schools uh those that are what we're saying double digit in terms of percentage uh decreases that includes brownsville holly mead meriwether red hill stone robinson and stony point so that's the elementary breakdown scrolling down middle schools um i just want to draw your attention to henley middle school they had a um 10 decrease from what we had anticipated and then on counter to that walton actually met their projection and actually exceeded it and then our high schools we're not seeing very substantial decreases there but there are decreases uh nonetheless with the exception of monticello so the final breakdown of this data we wanted to show was breaking it down by grade level and so this last piece compares our enrollment uh this school
132year compared to to compared to the projection by grade and then i'm going to scroll to the bottom here and the big takeaway here again not too surprising is that the biggest decreases is at our kindergarten level so when we compare to what we had anticipated we have currently enrolled 200 less students than we had projected which is 19 less than what we had projected and you can see again going across the uh table here elementary is where we are seeing uh the bigger decreases uh the outlier in secondary is sixth grade where we are seeing um that almost nine percent less than what we anticipated hey rosalind are our do we have an understanding where the where the children are going are they going to private school they're being homeschooled yep so um obviously
133we don't have private school data but we do have our home school data and we are seeing a increase in our homeschooling um we have a debbie correct member on 338 additional students that are homeschooling that as compared to last year so that's a piece of it uh we know anecdotally there are um families moving to private schools and we also know and every year there's families moving from the area um so i think it's a combination uh kindergarten may just be they're delaying their um their child starting school altogether um so we think it's a combination so uh due to current circumstances some of this is not to be unexpected but obviously these declines are of concern and will present challenges they'll present immediate financial challenges uh but also challenges in planning and budgeting
134for next year and what assumptions we will make as far as who and when these students will return but we'll discuss those a little bit in the next agenda item when we talk talk money but are there any questions about this data or any follow-up information we can provide has there been any analysis on how this is going to impact uh free and reduced lunch our percentage is going to go up uh so we have not done that analysis yet we're still um that process is an annual families have to reapply each year for that so that we typically look at in october and so we will present that information um unfortunately i think another challenge in this is uh with our meal service and um we haven't formally announced this yet but the usda
135extended their waiver and so we're providing meals free for everyone and so there's less of a pressure to apply for free reduce so that's just going to be another challenge in getting accurate data but we will continue to encourage families to apply who qualify rosalind i'd just like to say i mean this this is terrific data as always i mean these reports each year i mean i may not be crazy about what i'm reading but uh um you know it it really breaks it down by schools and by grade levels in such a way that it's pretty easy to understand where where trends are going and now if we can just get rid of covid um you know we'll be able to boost it back up thank you for this i would just like to
136point out that i think the kindergarten trend one thing that that might be indicative of is where virtual learning is less effective so that's why we're seeing that big drop in the elementary grades and particularly kindergarten i've noticed my own son is doing it and there's i was wondering if it was down because even as his class is tiny um and i think it's just because it's that's where virtual learning is very difficult and i i think we should keep that in mind as we start figuring out which kids are going to be going into school next there's a reason why parents are not doing virtual learning in some of those cases are there other questions from schmidt on our enrollment okay if not she'll step into the spotlight again and give us a budget
137update more so as i alluded to the next item uh we get to talk finances um this next agenda we have just actually a couple slides but it's in in two chunks first mr zimmerman will provide an update on our current financial state and then we'll transition to ms kumazawa who who will talk looking forward in our process as we plan next year's budget so mr zimmern uh thank you um schmidt this is uh jackson zimmerman i'm the school finance officer uh gonna present to you today um some uh information regarding what has happened to date from the beginning of the pandemic until uh the current point that we're in um maya could you put forward this so if you remember this pandemic began in march in an affected uh all of last fiscal year
138we did have some some covert related expenditures but relatively small we had some some savings associated with reduced operations but again relatively small if you remember we made a real effort to keep all of our staff whole during this process and since uh more than 85 percent of our dollars are tied up in staff those did not work that was not affected things like fuel and and other things of that nature did did results in some improved performance and operational savings we did see some lower general school revenues things like um building rental uh athletic fees donations those kinds of things were less in this past fiscal year than they have been previously one bright section of last fiscal year is that state revenues were higher than we had anticipated in june if you remember
139we did a a third quarter financial report in june and did some preliminary projections in terms of what we believe state revenues could be like primarily driven around sales tax was a significant concern during this time frame state revenues were higher than we had originally reported in june um so that is some very very good news um the other really good news um is that our local transfer that local government had communicated to us was going to be cut in the prior fiscal year does not in uh does not appear to be uh cut at all in this in prior in the prior fiscal year so that significant reduction in local revenue did not take place we so because of this we do anticipate a significant and not a significant we do anticipate having fund
140balance available increasing our fund balance that's available uh from this current fiscal year we are still um managing this current fiscal year our auditors do not come until october so we've got basically nearly a full month's worth of work still to do on on the prior fiscal year but wanted to give you a preview of what this looks like so one of the takeaways of this is the prior fiscal year ending june 30th looks like we are going to have some increased fund balance and it's going to give us some flexibility in operating for fiscal year 21 which we're in currently so in fiscal year 21 we have had some very significant expenditures for covert related either directly or indirectly kinds of expenses the range is is well over a million um certainly in approaching
141the two million dollar range in terms of expenditures for ppe equipment if you remember we distributed a large number of um of ipads we have distributed a very large number of hot spots um so those kinds of expenditures along with ppe and some cleaning equipment and supplies um they really did add up during this time period some of these are going to be offset by cares act monies but not all of them cares act is not sufficient to cover all of these expenses so that's that's one thing that we're keeping an eye on for the current fiscal year operational expenditures we're operating in a huge unknown here we have never operated a school division um where we're bringing in some kids for the year most kids running virtually um we were running school buses but
142not as many as we'd had previously so the the concern is that we're we're still in terms of operational expenditures and are relatively unknown as we develop some more experience in this area we'll get a better handle on our operational expenditures could be some savings could be some some increased expenditures a lot of question marks during this time period the next few weeks will provide us with more information in terms of revenues we did um we did have so we're going to experience some generally lowered school school revenues we are also going to be experiencing some losses in terms of our revenue generating programs edep in particular the expenditures in that program will be exceeding edep revenues so we will just need to monitor this as time moves forward state funding again that that sales
143tax significa issue associated with last year carries over into the current year we believe that the sales tax forecast um is is higher than what we had originally began our budget for for fiscal year 21. so that's some good news some bad news the enrollment our enrollment's down our enrollment is down a lot so state revenue has driven prime a large component of state revenue is driven by your overall enrollment numbers we had budgeted for a higher level of enrollment than we currently have how this enrollment number rolls out over this time period is going to to drive our our state revenues so um because we're we have lower enrollment our average daily membership which is what our revenue is based upon is anticipated to be significantly lower the one thing i wanted to point
144out much discussion has been taking place at the at the legislative level about an enrollment hold harmless that legislation did not get reported out of committee um that was very disappointing as many divisions across the state are experiencing this enrollment loss and i know that a number of um state organizations are planning on bringing this forward and we're planning on bringing it forward as far as our legislative packet really wanted to make sure that that we keep that hold harmless legislation in the forefront of our mind when we have discussions with the legislators so sort of summarizing where we are at the end of the first quarter we have a number of areas where we're keeping an eye on some revenue areas are better some are worse but the big advantage that we have now
145is we have some fund balance and so it gives us a level of flexibility uh to run through this current cycle that is very very good for us it gives us many more options than we had um than we were anticipating at the end of june and i'm turning this over to ms kumazawa thanks jackson um so to shift gears a little bit we have begun planning our budget development process for our fy22 budget this is a draft timeline of what we are proposing and i'll mention what's a little bit different this year than previous years and what's coming up ahead so the next um work session on the 24th will focus around the cip and long-range planning and we will give you an update about the cip and and have a discussion around our
146priorities for how we bring projects uh back if if that is even an option and then after that we will um uh the school board members will come together with the board of supervisors to further um have the discussion about cip but then also the other um joint efforts of discussing where we are with our um compensation based on our um our uh we will compare where we are with our world of world at work and our other market just to see where we are just in order to determine any strategies for the future and then on november 12th is really the time where we will get together to discuss the annual budget that is when the state of the division will be presented to you and that will be a time to provide budget
147input and after then is when we will be receiving state and local revenue projections so as you can see the fall and the winter work sessions are a little bit more streamlined than previous years we don't have as many um and that has been planned in a court in with the local government and making sure we are aligned there and then you can see typically we have the funding request in january but we're proposing that we move that back about a month to february so that we can fully incorporate the most recent revenue estimates and we're not you know in on as uncertain of the place as we might be in january we just want to work with the full information that we have and i think that the longer we wait um we can
148work with better data so we're proposing pushing the funding request back to february and having those work sessions run through the end of february maybe into march but still adopt the budget in april local government is is proposing a similar calendar where everything will be pushed back just a little bit more to give staff more time to incorporate in more relevant revenue updates and then i also quickly wanted to pull up our annual budget goals that we have uh in our budget document every year um so while we still don't know what our revenues projections are going to be next year we do have goals that we try to strive for first and foremost being to meet our mission so i'll give you a moment just to read through those and i just asked for
149this evening if for your agreement with these goals as we go into the budget planning process and there will be more time to provide input as you saw in november and january and i also um the next slide is is a slide to encourage you to think about what your preliminary budget input is for next year and again this is extremely early in the process we really don't have any indication of what our revenues are going to look like we don't know what our full expenditure needs will be but um i will open it up just for a few minutes for you all to provide preliminary high level areas where you think should be focus points for the fy 22 budget but before we do that are there any questions about um our current state
150of finances or with the budget process for next year miss komazo i have a question about um two slides back where you were talking about the budget request happening in february will that be uh dr haas's superintendent's budget request as well as the school board yes uh budget request so we'll get both of those done during the month of february as opposed to january and then early february and this will help us align our assumptions with local government a little bit better before we had always been about a month ahead of them and it's been tricky trying to align a lot of our assumptions going into our budget just i would add too it also puts us out in as one of the early school divisions and stating what our uh if we you know
151if and when we have compensation increases when we come out of the gate so earlier it makes it easier for other divisions to sneak ahead of us before they get into the hiring season which is a disadvantage are there any other questions for a budget team so these blocks are just a simplified view of our basic budget goals these are the goals that we strive for when developing the budget each year student learning equity and employees but are there other areas such as service restoration do we find ways to creatively bring back services that we have cut in the current year what are other items of interest to you whether it's legislative or technology um if you all want to chime in and just give us just preliminary guidance i think that would be helpful
152for us as we move forward last year we had put in a request for technology upgrades for something like eight million dollars and uh i know dr adcoff tried to get that through the cip committee and uh they really weren't having any of it i think anything that we can we can put into a technology uh folder would be much needed and i'm sure dr diggs can give a lot of information on that areas to see how this budget cycle goes because uh maybe i guess i'm being premature but there's gonna be cuts right this is gonna be my first cycle where it's not what are we adding but what can we keep when what needs to go away so i guess it's going to be an interesting process this time a little different than
153what i'm used to it's less fun yeah and i think you know along with that the challenge is um what you know i i don't want to sound um premature but you know as we get into october november as well we're we're going to want to start getting input and uh from the public from our you know from our school community around how we will move forward in our next school year to try to address the learning situation that we have right now so it's going to be a time of engagement i know the board has talked about having more town halls moving forward i'd be very interested in working together with the school board as we work our way into the funding request season to receive input and [Music] receive comments and ideas helping
154us to define what our current situation is and what our problems are from the perspective of students and families and and our employees so that then we can we can really start to um identify targets for things we want to improve and develop strategies going into next school year and over the next several years particularly to address the learning slide that is taking place with kindergarteners first graders the the youngest age students that that we need to recover and it's and it's really a long recovery prospect and i think it should be treated that way there are many options out there but i would really want to engage with the public it's hard to engage during a crisis and i think the board did an outstanding job of doing that opening yourselves up to those
155town halls was a big deal i thought uh now it's it's a different kind of a crisis it's a it's a learning crisis it's it's different in the sense that um we can get in front of it you know from where we are right now so i'd really want to just think out loud with the board over the coming month or two about how do we structure those um those inputs for our community to help us move in that direction the other piece is that given the idea that if a large proportion of the students that haven't come to school this year are kindergarteners we're going to have you know as dave was pointing out it's going to be some real shifts around our enrollment that are going to drive a a strange-looking kindergarten class
156if if many people did exercise their option to hold their child out for a year we're going to have a very large kindergarten class well that that was a the kindergarten class potential impact on our enrollment was one i was going to ask roslyn about i know it's early it's too early to do this but if we what kind of intel can we get from these parents about whether or not they plan to enroll next year because that that could be huge we'll have whole buildings of kindergartners how cool would that be it would be pretty cool kindergartners are awesome um as i alluded to in the enrollment agenda item making projections for next year is going to be challenging so we have begun those processings of what are those creative ways of outreach in
157the community do you survey you know a lot of those families registered and unregistered so you start contacting them and we're going to talk about that a little bit at the work session about what assumptions we're going to have to make and so that we're all on the same page as far as how we're going to build that budget okay mrs uh amaya did you receive any input on uh your question what you were asking about the board or from the board um it's i mean it's and whatever it's all up to you guys if you have any if you have any thoughts now but if not it's still really though so no graham we totally didn't respond no right totally didn't respond i mean i think you know students equity and and and staff
158were the three top tier things i don't see those moving out of the top considerations true although we're going to have to be recruiting a lot of kindergarten teachers are we all in agreement with kate's um point that the top three shown on the uh slide uh the three that's most important to us at this point in time operationally yes okay yes with the technology in the in the lower half okay all right so does that give you any input yes thank you okay all right thank you all right so thanks to roslyn and the whole budget team for our budget update and again i think we had mentioned this back in um in march 2 how we were so much ahead of the game with budget presentation last year and then in march everything
159sort of fell apart so let's see jinxed ourselves graham right so let's hope that doesn't happen again this year all right are there is there any other business from board members or our superintendent um ms lee did you have i thought you might have a question i do have a question i actually have a couple of them but um i i know that um first and second grade students who need ipads have had we had difficulty getting them in where are we with that um hi i can answer that i'm christine diggs chief technology officer we fortunately just received notice today as a matter of fact from the delivery company that they will arrive at our office by 4 pm on monday as you know the uh our order that we placed in july was
160um out of stock in the united states and is coming from china and it has been on we were unable to track it apple could not give us any kind of tracking information so we've been operating completely in the dark but did get word today so we have already plans in place to have staff working every night next week until 10 pm to try to process those as quickly as we can there's 1660 of them and it's a slow process to get them into our inventory into the cases and assigned to students and buildings but we're going to work around the clock to get them out from our offices as soon as we possibly can and so do you anticipate that what happened by the end of next week with all of that work i
161appreciate the work um do you have a sense of that time wine so you know in ordinarily i might be able to give you a better estimate but i um i don't feel like i can promise i we feel like we can finish by next week the end of next week the challenge we have right now is that we have very um very limited staff that's based centrally that we know we can pull during the day to do the work we can't really pull our building base staff right now from supporting their schools and parents and students um sure because they're they're on site in our buildings but they're also fielding phone calls that come in to help kind of offload from our service desk so without having really the full availability of our staff
162to also help process these we can only do it after hours right now i can't predict how many folks are available after hours to come in after a long day of supporting families and students so it's a little unpredictable right now but our goal is to have them processed by next friday and if we can deliver before that we absolutely will and i know building services is ready and they're on call on standby that if we get some ready they'll be able to help deliver for us which will be a help that we won't have to also be delivering great so christina it is the case however that all of our students have some sort of device even if it's not optimal the that was the that was the plan that they schools would make
163it available now whether everybody took advantage of it but yes the we had the inventory to make sure and so developmentally we believe that it kindergarten first grade and second grade students perform best do best with an ipad and that is the ideal but yes first and second graders do have a laptop if they came and picked one up we had them available so there was a device yes available and kindergarten students did get ipads great thank you oh sorry i didn't mean to cut you off no i think um the it would be ideal if we could get them two buildings and then um they'll of course have to schedule pickup times but um we have we have i've heard student learning say um that these first two weeks are getting acquainted getting oriented
164getting acclimated and so the sooner we can get them in there and we meet the end of that first two weeks of school and they have their ipads i think will be really um a good goal great thank you very much um and along those lines are we um does have we been able to give everyone a hot spot who has needed one i knew we were getting some in last two weeks ago we did we got them in it was really amazing actually um we have given out over a thousand okay um and we've been delivering them to schools and schools have been issuing them and right now we've paused on whether or not we need any more or not from what information we have everyone that schools have has interacted with has been
165given one what's happening right now is the process of families are realizing and trying them oh this one doesn't work so now they're going to have to work through the there's five different options right there's five different carriers so they're trying to work through that process of oh if the this att one att one isn't working then they'll give them the next best guess that they can have and it's a it's an educated guess but it's still a guess in terms of sell signal from their home location and um for an example we had a family out in the crozet area that went through all five different carriers and the fifth one which was us cellular which is usually the last one that's provided actually worked for them so that's the process that's going on
166right now in schools great thank you very much um i i did have another question based a little bit off of um public comment and uh also just because you know i've been talking to parents and again it does seem like you know a lot of variation from school school and i just wondered if we do have um any formal means of feedback i mean i know like we're sort of you know wading into this great unknown of this virtual school but i was just i was curious if we had any formal means of feedback in the works for um parents for teachers for staffers for any other of our stakeholders i think dr mclaughlin alluded to that earlier so i'm going to let him take that question yes thanks we are currently planning uh
167some surveys and some information to go out to our principals for staff uh also some surveys that are going to go out to students and to community members within the next couple of weeks okay okay are there any other questions from uh board members i i guess i just have uh a question to milani burkhart because i know that she is is working on developing a questionnaire to do a survey of high school students i didn't know if that was still on your agenda on your plans or not or if you had anything you wanted to ask of the school board or or i just think you do i think it's a great idea i'm thinking that this survey would be released maybe a month or a month after school starts so i think that's
168going to be after my term so i'm hoping that the next student representative after me could hopefully um like give a summary of the report and then um i was also hoping with the survey to attach like an introduction either in like a paragraph form or video form of just like who i am what my role is and then i thought that was a really good opportunity to introduce the next representative but i'm not really sure how to coordinate all that but i that's something i'm hoping to do okay uh miss burkhardt you are working with um yes mrs johnson on your your proposal right yeah working with her i think you're working with uh with dr mclaughlin and mr gilman and then i let well mr johnson of monticello i let him know okay
169no i was thinking about ms jennifer johnson yeah um but no he said you're working with uh dr mclaughlin so that's right we've been we've been working together on a few drafts uh and one of the things i know that uh milani mentioned that she's really interested in doing is that video introduction so we'll have something um put together prior to that survey going out okay all right any other questions or business from school board members i just want to say thank you to everyone this has been a very informative session i feel like we got through a lot of topics with a lot of great information in them so thank you to everyone who is still on um for putting that all together right you know i agree with that wholeheartedly because it's called
170and i've also got to thank mr page for something personally because uh for those of you who are on early you heard my dogs were barking loudly and they consistently kept doing that until we came back from the um closed meeting and then mr page said may we have a moment of silence and i swear to god the dogs have not barked since he said that wow thank you mr page you've great influence thank you very much hey graham can you talk with my dogs i'll work on it dave all right so i do just have maybe four real quick thank you's first thanks to mrs burkhardt melanie for that great work that you did in introducing the spotlight on education you did a very good job there so thanks so much then also thanks
171to all of our staff for your presentations tonight you like uh katrina said those were all really informative thirdly thanks to all of our speakers tonight who made public comment then finally but certainly not least thanks to our teachers and staff for all that you are doing under these most difficult circumstances and realize that we really truly do appreciate you so there be no further business our meeting for tonight thank you